someway, somehow (I could save everyone)
by Yotsubadancesintherain5
Summary: "Come see me again. When you've got them out, okay?"


It was a place mixed with the joys of finding a baby raccoon inside and the terrors of decayed flesh shambling around her home and Sandra succumbing to a grisly fate. The realization that the food was running low and the possibility that she would die up there.

Now, the treehouse was tranquil, and Clementine swung her leg out as she waited. The sky was cloaked in sunset, and her home was pristine.

"Haven't been here for a while," Lee said, as he settled down next to her.

"I haven't had time to think about this place in a long time," Clementine said.

"It's a good place," Lee replied. "You even have the little tea set there. Very quaint."

"Didn't you say about drinking… whiskey, bourbon, out of them?"

"You heard that?" Lee asked. "In my defense, after what just happened I could have used a drink."

"No, I understand, now," Clementine replied. "Even if some of them taste like fire."

There was a teasing tone but it still made Lee raise one eyebrow, and Clementine braced herself for the parenting lecture.

It never came because Lee glanced down and winced.

"Does it hurt?"

"No," Clementine said, and she ran her hand over the bandaged stump to prove it, "It just feels weird. Like my leg is still there, but it's just cold and airy. You probably know."

"Guess we both gave an arm and a leg for the people we love, huh?"

"If only it could bring them back," Clementine replied.

"You did your best."

"I know, and AJ said that I did an awesome job, with everything, but, I… when I saw that Minnie got bit I didn't…"

She breathed in to collect herself.

"Maybe I didn't want to give the others another reason to hate me," Clementine said. "Maybe I expected her to join us again, or that when she got bit she would turn fast, but because of what I didn't do, Tenn…"

He looked so afraid, choking in pain. There were so many different factors in her head, different outcomes, shoot Minerva, shoot the walker that loomed over, at least give him mercy and put a bullet through his head, but the past was the past.

"And I… didn't kill Lilly either."

"Ah." Lee nodded, his fingers running along his beard. "I did just the same. When she killed Carley, I hadn't been that angry since... but I didn't kill her. She had to live with what she did."

"She was left with nothing," Clementine said, spitefulness in her voice. "I wonder if it would've been _better_ if I let AJ shoot her."

"Why didn't you?" Lee asked, as simple as asking why she drank coffee that morning, devoid of any accusation.

"I wanted AJ to _stop_," Clementine said, "And he was so angry about James… I didn't think he understood, but he said he didn't like killing and I believed him. He had to make the hardest call, instead of me."

His first kill had been of a perceived enemy, and the second of a dear friend. Sometimes the similarities between her young life and his made bile climb up into her throat.

She wished hard that it was there that the similarities would cease.

"I'm sorry," Clementine said, quiet and tiny.

"What for?"

"For running away. For believing him," Clementine said. "And I got you-"

Just the same as always Lee pulled her into a hug; sometimes it made everything hurt more, that it wasn't really him and he was gone and it was her fault, and sometimes, when everything was as good as it could be in these times, she could convince herself that she was really speaking with him.

Even still, even with all this forgiveness from the real Lee and the one crafted in her dreams, it would never leave her. "_It's hard to dance with the devil on your back_," her mother used to sing, and she never understood it until corpses rose from their graves.

"I always wanted you to go on," Lee said. "But you understand that already, don't you?"

"Mmm-hmm." She didn't trust herself to say much more. AJ had stood in the barn, shaking with his quiet sobs, something she could clearly see even with the sunlight falling in her eyes. The axe missed its intended mark and Clementine had thought it was a horrible mistake, the burning in her leg was like a thousand tiny needles, it hurt so much more than stitching up her own arm, but she woke up alive. AJ paved his own path.

AJ would go on, but she wouldn't waste this second chance.

"I'll keep going," she said as she drew away.

Lee responded with that comforting smile as the dream finally began to fade. "I know you will."

**A/N: Originally posted on AO3 on March 29 2019**

**Bruh.**

**That episode ripped my heart out of my chest and then shoved it back in with a pat and a smile.**


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